I've been animating and working on the movement in the game. It's starting to slowly reform back into a game, and soon I'll have some combat systems ready and I'll be able to make a new video. The new player model is also ready soon, but I won't be showing it until the video as well. It's gonna be pretty cool, needless to say.

This week I plan on having a fully functioning idle AI along with the moveset customization systems. Movement animations should be somewhat complete by the end of the week as well, but we'll see. I'm likely going to leave a lot of the crazier animations for Mark since I'm such an amateur, but I believe my skills are at a decent enough level to do some of the quicker movements that aren't as in your face as say a running cycle is.

Some word on the AI; I wrote an auditory cortex and an occipital lobe for their brains that are both better than the ones seen in the third demo (I think I've mentioned this before), but I can also say both are completely working 100% now. The auditory systems use real sounds projected by the player, meaning that everytime you take a step, the actual sound can be heard by the AI assuming its in their hearing radius (which can vary). I've also added a quadratic falloff for the sound that's based on the way sound works realistically. It's nothing to write home about, but it's still pretty darn cool. The occipital system has some raycasting and arc calculations for seeing you in a certain FOV, and it can vary between AI's as well.

Also, I re-implemented Lock-On with a super accurate system to ensure you always lock onto the correct target by deciding whether to lock onto an aimed target or simply the closest one to you.

Lastly, in case some of you want more frequent updates, I often talk about my progress on the game a lot on my Twitter account if you're willing to sift through my just as frequent personal posts. But hey, you're more than welcome to follow me. I'd love to answer any questions or just talk to some of you.

Daniel and I have been working on the game of course, and we've made good progress. Most of it under the hood--good news is we got a new modeler/animator and his name is Mark. He's a good guy and hopefully is gonna stick it out with us until the end.

We've been redesigning the tile system so it'll be more varied and robust, and so far that's going pretty well. My friend Forrest is going to be modeling those new tiles.

I've started on rebuilding the AI, having some problems with the occipital core; the arc-based seeing systems seem to want to be off, even though 2d tests showed our seeing calculations are correct. The best part is the exact same code worked back before the demo and strangely isn't now, so there's that.

However, hearing systems seem to be accurate and correct. Sounds are indexed with locations, so AI will be able to investigate it in the future much like how they did in our third demo.

Anyhow, I'll be moving onto some simple patrolling AI tonight, and I'll be focusing on AI interaction between each other for this week, along with some basic player interaction. I'll also be doing some animation with our new base rig that Mark has so kindly provided us, and Austin should have the new MORS model done sometime this week as well.

Next week I'll begin animating the movement for the base model with Mark, along with the various combat animations I'll be needing. Then, on the third week, I'll finally begin combat mechanics. The following week after that will be spent on combat AI. And so on.

I know a few of you actually keep up with this blog, and I feel kind of bad for neglecting it.

I'm going to fill you all in on what we're doing:

Okay, so we've completed the concept art for MORS 09, he's been modeling by the same guy who drew him. So we're going to see how that turns out, but regardless if it goes well or not, I'm going to continue after we get the result. If the model isn't usable or doesn't meet my standard, I'm going to start animating the old model instead and just go forward with progress on the game.

We've added motionblur and better shading systems, along with some fixes so that the engine is fully compatible with Macs. The new physics engine is in, and Daniel and I moved some stuff over to a server so we can work together online. Our productivity is skyrocketing because we can work together and solve problems that one or the other is more suited to solve. For example, Daniel is better with math and I'm pretty good with general design and code layouts.

As for gameplay, I've basically been tightening the movement even more than it already is, and modifying the controls. Some basic changes include:

Wall sliding is activated by grabbing a wall, instead of dashing into it

You can now grab and throw enemies that are light enough

Sprinting has been tightened

Auto-dashing has been replaced with Auto-boosting (short bursts of speed rather than essentially flying)

Did some HUD work, made it more stable

You can actually transverse floors in the dungeon now

That's all for now, we'll be moving forward a lot faster now though. I intend to model a lot of place holding models and we'll just go ahead and replace those at the end of development like I mentioned in an older post. Daniel and I are pretty set on finishing this monster.

If you're interested and would like to help, please do contact us. We have a contact bar on the main page of the blog, so do check it out.

Sorry I've been absent. We've been hard at work! I promise!
So what have we been doing in the last three weeks? More planning. But now we're actually starting on development.

We managed to grab us a concept artist, and not only that, we may be getting in some new modelers. We've planned out the gameplay, and have been tweaking Insomnia.

So what have we changed with our engine? Well, for one, we optimized the absolute crap out of it. It runs a lot faster than it was before, as we implemented a new faster math library and also directly connected Bullet to our physics engine. The physics engine is pretty messy and unpleasant to use at the moment, but Daniel and I will be sorting that out tomorrow.

The graphics engine mostly had under the hood changes, and is running fairly faster due to its new optimizations.

Now, due to this major architecture change in the physics engine, I ended up gutting most of the AI - none of it is left!

However, the good thing is the engine is now fully compatible with Mac systems. Our engine as a whole will now work on a Mac with little hassle - as long as it's relatively new. The downside is older machines that are pre-built (2009 and below) aren't supported. This shouldn't be a big deal, since most of our audience probably has a relatively new rig. You shouldn't have any problems if your machine is newer and doesn't use an Intel graphics card (may God save your soul if you do)

I've finished planning about 70% of the gameplay, and the game's layout is essentially done. The assets we need for environments need a bit more specifications, but we've already started work on concepting the first area in the game - which be shown in our next update video in two or three months (at most)

I'll be completely retooling the combat system to support a new idea that I don't think has ever been seen an action game. We're calling it Reflex Grappling. It's going to be insane - and just to drop a hint, it involves flying around at high velocities, snapping necks, ripping apart robots limb by limb, and swinging around your enemies like they're made of rubber.

It's going to be awesome.
Until then, I leave you with more concept art. (This isn't final, but it's close)

So, not too much progress this week. We did more planning and conceptual work. I can't show you all of it, but I can share with some of our plans.

Anyway, me and Daniel worked on graphics and physics engine ideas. We've been overhauling them math stuff in the engine for faster calculations, which have shown to be very fruitful. We're already getting some really good performance increases.

Some of our graphics ideas include faster and more efficient Anti-Aliasing, Motion-Blur, new material effects, particle effects, a new lighting system, along with Tessellation.

For physics, we have ideas for ragdolls, hit collisions, and even vegetation physics.

We've also decided to call our engine Insomnia. Because the game is called We Shall Wake, and it seemed fitting. It'll be open source and free to use after the game is done, and we'll document everything about it thereafter.

As for concept work, we're still trying to nail down a new design for MORS. Here are a few of the concepts our artists put together. Though I haven't accepted any of them yet.

This week we were mostly busy, so most of what's been done is internal and barely noticable. But I'll go ahead and explain.

As most of you probably know, we've been working on redesigning MORS to make him look cooler and just better overall by actually setting up an internal team infrastructure that can allow for more organized work. Of course to do this, we ended up need a concept artist. I think we've found one, but I'm not sure yet.

On top of this, I did some programmatic stuff. Firstly, I added a new developers console. It doesn't have any commands yet, but it's been set up to allow me to easily make them for later tools I may need. I also fixed the camera that I got complaints about by removing jerking, and making transitions between jumps and movement smoother.

Daniel went ahead and finished the reflection system in the graphics engine, and is going to spend tomorrow on the new physics engine. I'm also going to add OGL3.1 UI fixes tomorrow, meaning Macs will now be compatible with the game.

We should get started on the new model sometime next week, and I'll be sure to post pictures of progress next Friday. Til then!

Now that We Shall Wake's demo is out, and we've taken time to organize, I think it's time I laid out our battle plans.

Right now we're doing a ton of planning. We have a document we're all working on, and I especially have been writing down where we're going with this. I've laid out a timeline for about 40% of the game's actual development, but a lot of it will come down to how fast we can get our models and other resources - which is hard when your budget is zero dollars.

And that's okay. We don't need help. We've already proven this. We're going to prove you can make a good game without a budget of 1.6 million dollars. In fact, I want to prove you can make an excellent, fun game for zero dollars.

Our game won't be this years best cinematic experience, because I think that's silly. I want to make a game that has a deep, fun, and enjoyable combat system with a fun dungeon generator to use it in. We want cool characters, and I want you to have cold chills every time a boss walks onto the screen. They will get steadily harder, and cooler looking. It'll be great.

A lot of you may still be confused on what we're making - so I'll lay it out. It'll be taking Dark Cloud elements and putting them together with Devil May Cry. Which means the game will center around exploring dungeons (which is what the tower is) and synthesizing items - but also since it's DMC, it will have an absolutely crazy combat system. We've already laid this out too, so it's just a matter of me practicing my animation skills and putting it together.

About every 20 floors you'll encounter a boss - where there will be about 100 floors. However, each floor will take around 10 minutes to get through assuming you don't rush through. In which case I'd imagine it take around 5 minutes. I'll be designing the dungeon generator to make simple puzzles on some floors so that you can't simply just find the door - and along with this the dungeons will have a ton of corridors and dead ends to get lost in. On top of the smart AI trying to savagely hunt you down in packs to kill you.

We'll also have save stations, kind of like Metroid, where they'll be located in their own room every few floors. It'll be up to you to find them though.

So what are we doing now? Right now, Daniel is making our new physics engine which utilizes Bullet, so that we can add more fancy things to how the game plays - like ragdolls and the like so that we can rip arms off of characters and such with grab moves. It's gonna be cool. Not only this, but I hope to add support for premade maps for boss rooms (which will also open the game to forms of modding down the road)

I've been writing down new gameplay ideas, and plan to totally enhance the movement system I've been calling AutoMotion. Allowing for back flips, front flips, better dashes, better wall running, and better, more flashy teleporting. We're also going to be adding some new particle effects for this also.

I also completed gutted the combat engine seen in the last demo. It was really shaky, and had a ton of bugs due to it being made in such a short time. If you played the demo, you probably noticed how smooth and intuitive the movement was in comparison to the combat. This for me is unacceptable, so I plan on completely retooling it.

When school settles down, I'll be starting on a debug console as well so that I can make some developer functions to make better cutscenes too - and I'll also be looking into using Kinect for motion capturing animations.

Ivan will be starting on our new models soon after we finalize some new designs. We're looking for a concept artist to help out, and if you think you could do well for us, please do feel free to contact me.

That's all for now. I'll try and make a blog post at least once a week to update you on progress from now on - so be sure to check in every once in a while. Take care everyone. :)

So, I didn't manage to get the demo done before summer ended, but that's okay. Because that means we can just devote more time to making sure everything works and we can stomp more bugs than we could've with the deadline. Right now my aim is to hopefully have it done before August ends.

I managed to get some of MORS's AI done for his fight though. It turns out he can string combos better than I can, but it's still kind of rigid and not where I want it. Right now he can knock you into the air, and you can both kind of descend while punching each other senseless, but I think I need a larger stun time so he can knock you into the air, punch you for a bit, and then slam you down. But then again, I don't want people to be able to stun lock, so I may leave it as it is.

I remember the original goal of the game was to make a good Devil May Cry game, but with some twists and possibly much faster. Luckily, I've been able to achieve that to a degree. You've got your basic DMC combat, but I've added some more fighting game mechanics, and I also added a teleportation feature. So you'll find yourself teleporting all over the room when you're fighting MORS and really makes for a cool high speed experience. Of course, with him swooping around everywhere, you'll also notice it's kind of hard to fight him. Which is also good. When I first flipped his switch on, he managed to kill me in less than 2 seconds.

Of course, I ramped down his difficulty so he'd use less devastating combos, but as you fight him, I've told his AI to ramp up the difficulty as his health drops. He currently has three AI stages; the first being his "observe" state, where he's just going to let you get in free hits and teleport a bit, his combo length is also limited to 2 hits before he resets. The second state is "aggression" mode, where he'll actively try to kill you by sprinting at you and starting combos that can last up to 20 hits before a reset/knockback. His final stage is "limit" mode, where he'll actually not run at you but teleport at you from all directions and start combos.

Due to all these factors, I'm still debating on whether or not I want to add a guard button. I guess we'll see.

The tower model is completely done, and we've loaded it into the game successfully. We also have the ran working and Daniel's working on the water shaders. Problem however is that the tower textures look wonky. So I'm having our textures guy work on them to make it look more professional and overall metal.

We're also painfully low on combat animations, so until those are done, I can't even start on the combat AI. I can only do basic stuff like teaching them how to move around and the like. Which is what I'm currently working on.

The engine is also having some minor problems with texture loading, seeing as they're so high quality. We'll sort that out as well.

We've made a ton of progress either way. I've fixed various problems in the combat engine, and I've also made movement even more smooth than it was before. I've also added some tactical movement options such as the side step, and I've also made Auto-Dashing more controllable. You can now tilt and sway in the air as you're flying. I also finished the graphics and basic settings menus.

We won't release the game until it meets my high standards. I'm not one to release utter crap. That's not how we work. When it's working 100% and I think it's ready, we'll release it. But it'll at least be worth the wait.

We've finished most of the graphics engine, optimized it, rewrote the gameplay engine, wrote a sound and utility engine, and started on gameplay. Not only that, but we've made demonstration videos and what-not as well. Oh, and MORS finally got an actual model.

Right now, our current goal is to make a playable boss fight demo and release it by the 30th. I'm not sure if we'll meet the goal, seeing as we're extremely low on animation resources, and I can't work on combat without them. So we'll really have to speed things up to make it.

I also programmed a cool menu engine for the utility engine, and with it I finally made an item management system. It's grid based, like Diablo, except the pieces are rotatable. However, not only this, but I took the synthesizing system from the Dark Cloud series and built it in as well. You can synthesize ANY item into a 1x1 synthesized object, which can be then synthesized into your Chassis to modify 09's stats. (09 is the name for MORS 0.9 now.)

The cool thing about synthesizing into your Chassis, is that you can build 09 into whatever kind of character you want. Of course, he can't be an efficient Jack of all Trades, as each synthesized object also has a drawback for its advantage. So, for example, you could build 09 into a robot built for high speed combat, whom of which can't take a hit, or a tank that's slow, but when his hits land, are deadly.

This should really make your experience pretty fun. Although, the menus still need a lot of work before I think they'll be up to par. The problem right now is that the Chassis system throws a lot of numbers at you in a complicated list, so it's hard to tell what you're changing. I'll make a record keeping system so you don't have to go and make spreadsheets to track 09's synthesizing input/output.

Anyway, I'll be back with more information later. I'm off to work on the options menu for the game, and then I'll probably get back to animating.

I've been making the sound engine, we made a new physics engine, and Daniels been hard at work on the graphics engine.

We've also decided to restructure the gameplay engine.

Here's some of our updates we've posted to our Google+ group:

4/15/13
"God. I can't stop laughing. xD

Me and Brayden decided that I should remake the collision detection and handling, and I'm currently stuck for several hours in school waiting for my turn to review my coding homework. I had code lying around from some old projects that I polished, modified and reused for this and it went a bit faster to put it together than I thought.

To test it I created a very small map 20x20 with 1000 units in it to test performance in a crowded area. In addition to running at over 100 FPS, I found the ability to just plow through them and push them over the edge of the map so goddamn amusing. Of course I, uh, had to test the new physics thoroughly so I've been doing that for almost an hour now, and it's still hilarious.

Huehuehue."4/17/13
"Hey guys. Tooled around with the sound engine tonight.

It was built to fused in with Daniel and I's engine as a library, so I've built it up to match his coding and also be highly modular.

These modular features include fully custom codecs, utilizing an interface to allow for people who use our engine in the future to build completely custom parsers for the sound engine, and then load them in as if I had made it myself.

On top of this, it's extremely basic and I can call sounds easily, and also modify the placement of everything easily.

It's also extremely efficient.

Tonight I built a simple WAV parser Codec, and loaded in a sound from the game. It played quickly and worked fantastically.

This weekend if I have time, I'll be working on the 3d positioning and also adding in a Codec for OGG files. After that, I'll be adding some external loader threads for longer sounds so that they can be built into the game quickly, along with streaming functions. Then it will be able to be plugged into the game.

Sorry about my lack of updates. I've been really busy, but after tomorrow I'll be back and be updating as per usual."

4/20/13

"Here's an update from Daniel and I. It was originally a planning document, but you guys should be able to see it too.

I also added what I'm calling the "mega dash". You can double tap dash, and if you're aimed at an enemy, you'll boost towards them. Although it won't feel that awesome until we get some kind of motion blur system working. The FOV zooms out though, which kind of gives you a feeling of acceleration.

Today, I made some menus. I also fixed some minor sound problems, (although positional sound as a whole is still borked), along with importing all the new models and animations. The new models were made to be more compatible with varying graphics cards.

As for the menus, the system was made so that I could make different menus really fast - in the screenshot below you can see the three menus. Two of which are sub menus created by the main pause menu on the right of the screen. These can be moved around with the right mouse button.

The system involves each "menu" holding a list of menus itself. So it could go as deep as I want it too. Anyway, if a parent is shutdown, it's "child" menus are as well. The parent won't fully close until it's children has as well.

Originally, the pause menu was just going to have a list of sub menus and that was going to be it. You can see that below.

Of course, this proved to be difficult to work with and I ultimately scrapped it.

Next up I plan on actually completing the upgrade system. It's gonna be pretty cool.